Let's continue our close examination of the iPhoto '11 photo manager from the popular package. Just in case, we remind you that the package comes free with all new Macs, and is also available for purchase through stores that sell software, including the Mac App Store. In the fifth part of the iPhoto review, we'll cover about iPhoto Creative Features, and about the work of the program in full screen mode... It was not by chance that the story about working in full-screen mode was postponed to the very end of the review - in view of the fact that almost all the functions and capabilities of the program are available in this mode, it would not be superfluous for the user to already have some idea of \u200b\u200bthe application's functions in order to compare the convenience other modes. In any case, full-screen mode is the future, because in the future Mac OS X Lion this way of working will appear in almost all standard applications of the system (and not only in standard ones).
Even in our digital 21st century, ordinary photography has not lost its value. Agree that the impressions from viewing a "real" photograph are completely different than from viewing its digital counterpart on a monitor screen. So how do we bring our favorites from our iPhoto library to reality? The simplest and most logical option is to write the selected images to a suitable medium and order prints at the nearest darkroom. You will place the finished photos in a standard photo album purchased in one of the stores. A bit corny, isn't it? How about creating something exclusive that only exists in one instance?
To the delight of users (mainly Western users: (iPhoto '11 has all the tools to create exclusive creations from photos, which can then be printed in one of the nearby companies working with iPhoto. So, select the photos from which we want to create some kind of printing products and click on the button Create a on the bottom toolbar of the program. On the pop-up that appears, select what exactly we will create.
ALBUM
This item allows you to create a virtual album from the selected photos on the side panel. At this stage, this item is not particularly interesting to us.
BOOK
Allows you to create a real book from pre-marked pictures. There are three types of binding available: hard, soft and wire spiral. Depending on the type of binding, you can additionally choose one of several sizes of the future book, from small S (9x7 cm) and up to large XL (33x25 cm). There are several types of color design for each type of binding. Book creation options aren't limited to just one layout. The user can choose any of 17 options: photo album, magazine, photo review, modern, family album, linear fields, pastel, watercolor, modern, official, texture fields, ordinary fields, photographs, folio, tropics, travel to Asia, ancient world... When you select any option at the bottom of the screen, its name, dimensions, cost of printing, as well as an image of its spread, on which you can evaluate the location of photos in the book, are shown.
We select the necessary parameters for our future book and click Create a... After that, we get to the next window, which displays all the pages, including the cover and dust jacket. It is in this window that the user will have to customize the appearance of each page, sign each photo, etc., depending on the selected book layout.
On any selected page, you can change almost everything, including the number of photos on the page, their layout, etc.
Some formatting features are available when writing or editing existing text. If the text is small, then a certain section of the page may be enlarged.
As you can see, iPhoto has even managed to integrate the basic functions of layout programs! Of course, you are unlikely to use them more than a couple of times, but the realization of the enormous potential of the program is still encouraging.
Any photo can be enlarged or reduced in order to fit into the frame, or, conversely, to place only a selected fragment of the photo in it. Double-clicking on a photo will open it in the editor, allowing the user to edit the photo if necessary.
In the mode of viewing all pages of the book project, it is convenient to use the buttons Design and Photos... Button Design allows you to change the location of photos and the background color on the selected page.
Button Photos allows you to view all photos of the project at once. If a particular photograph is not very good for a given book, then it can be removed from publication.
If the standard number of pages was not enough to accommodate all the selected photos, you can add new pages. But do not forget that additional pages increase the cost of printing the created book. In order to have an idea of \u200b\u200bhow the book will look after printing, the project can be viewed in a slide show by clicking the corresponding button on the bottom panel. A widescreen monitor is highly recommended for such viewing.
After the project is ready, boldly click on the button Buy a book... In the next windows, select the number of copies, indicate the address and delivery method, payment method, etc., then place an order.
We did not dwell in detail on the order of order and payment due to the fact that the function Buy a book does not work in Russia. But don't be discouraged! Would we even start talking about these functions if there was no loophole? Fortunately, it is possible to save the created book layout in the format PDF.By the way, in large cities of Russia there are already printing houses ready to work with photobooks from iPhoto.
CARD
Allows you to create a beautiful postcard from the selected photo in one of three options: embossed, double or single. For the embossed version, 27 design layouts are available, for double and single - as many as 53 layouts. Moreover, for each layout, you can choose a vertical or horizontal orientation and a background color. In general, you will definitely not feel a deficit;)
The possibilities for customizing the appearance of the postcard are similar to those used when creating the book. It is also possible to change the location and number of photos in the layout, edit text, etc.
To order and print ready-made postcards, you can also use not the button Buy a postcardand saving the layout to PDF file. Alternatively, if the user has a good photo printer, then the created postcard can be printed on his own, though without embossing or other printing gadgets. On the other hand, only an ardent enthusiast will dare to go to the printing house for one postcard.
THE CALENDAR
Allows you to create loose-leaf calendars with a wire spiral binding from selected photos. The dimensions of the calendar are 33x25 cm, there are 8 design layouts to choose from.
Before creating the calendar, you are prompted to specify the starting month and year and the total number of months in the calendar. It is also possible to include in the calendar holidays established in the user's country of residence. There are 36 countries to choose from, including Russia. Additionally, you can import events from iCal and birthdays of contacts from the Address Book to your calendar.
In the next window, we see calendar pages automatically designed and filled by the program in accordance with the settings specified by the user.
If the selected layout doesn't like something or the user decided to change the calendar settings, iPhoto allows you to do it at any time.
Is it worth mentioning again that after you finish working with the calendar, you can also save it to PDF and submit to print.
SLIDE SHOW
Allows you to create a slideshow of selected photos with beautiful transitions and music.
As in the previous modes of operation, double-clicking on a photo allows you to open it in the editor for further processing. Detailed settings for the future slideshow are available, with the ability to set individual parameters for both all slides, and only for the selected one.
In addition to a choice of 13 types of transitions and other settings, you can use luxurious themes, each of which includes original transitions, music and other effects. Among them there are such interesting topics as, for example, Placesthat uses information about the geographical coordinates of the location where the photo was taken, etc. When you hover over the theme thumbnails, the animation of the selected theme will be shown.
When creating a slideshow, it is possible to use musical accompaniment from both the selected theme and any track from the iTunes library. The composition selected in the mini-browser can be immediately listened to in order to determine whether this track is suitable for the selected slides or not.
For greater clarity, each slide can be provided with subtitles that explain what is shown in the picture. To do this, a so-called text slide is placed in front of the desired slide, which contains the subtitles that are superimposed on the picture.
In the process of creating a slideshow, the user can view it in the window, starting from any slide, using the button View... Button Playback starts a full screen view of the entire slideshow, starting with the very first snapshot.
The finished slideshow does not need to be viewed only in iPhoto, the slideshow can be exported to video file formats MOV, MP4, 3GP or M4V,which can then be viewed on any compatible device .
Finally, let us remind that iPhoto ’11 can work not only in the window, but also in full screen... If in previous versions only viewing functions were available in full-screen mode, then in iPhoto '11 the user will have almost the entire arsenal of tools for working with photos. In addition to the fact that in full screen mode all unnecessary windows will be hidden from the user and will not distract him from creative work, the screens of full screen mode themselves look luxurious.
When creating photo albums, and just when editing pictures, it is much more pleasant to work on the full screen than in a window.
Full screen mode is activated and deactivated by keyboard shortcut Alt + Cmd + F.
iPhoto '11 is by far one of the best programs written for Mac OS X. You have to try hard to find any flaws in this product, which has been carefully polished over the years. Perhaps the only one is that the iPhoto library grows too quickly due to the constant saving of modified versions of photos. If you have a shortage of disk space, then when you are actively working with iPhoto, remember this feature more often, otherwise you will be surprised that gigabytes will begin to melt almost before our eyes.
iPhoto offers a very wide range of options for cataloging photos, for initial processing and (which is also important) for exporting photos in a wide variety of formats - both electronic and paper. If nothing is more precious to you than the memories captured forever in your photos, then you will appreciate the potential of iPhoto. In any case, the program will leave few beginners indifferent to the program, everyone will find something useful in it for themselves.
iPhotois a fantastic app, but the tips in this section will allow you to further expand its capabilities. iPhotois an Apple app, part of the iLife suite, designed to meet all your photography needs. It is possible that this app is one of the most (if not the most) popular iLife programs. What user doesn't like the phenomenal ease of connecting a camera and the convenient ability to transfer all of the photos stored on it to your Mac? Of course, iPhoto is great, even with its default settings. However, this does not mean that you cannot make this program work even better.
Ability to print multiple selected images on one page
IPhoto 08 brings a whole host of great functionality, but it also removes one of the printing options that a huge number of users really liked, namely the ability to print selected images on a single page. In previous versions of iPhoto, you could select a number of pictures, and iPhoto automatically scaled them so that they all fit on a single page. It was a very convenient opportunity, and unfortunately it is now gone.
The good news is that you can still print your photos in this style. However, this requires additional work. This is done like this:
- First, select all the photos you want to print.
- Choose File → Print from the menu.
- A new window will open in which you should click the Print button.
Don't worry, iPhoto won't start printing your photos instantly. Instead, a Print window will appear on the screen, giving you access to a wide variety of print options. Once you see the Print window, select the Layout option from the drop-down list (Figure 9.52).
If you have never used the N-Up Print option, you may be wondering - what is the difference between this option and the built-in iPhoto Contact Sheet option. When you use the Contact Sheet option, you set the number of columns and iPhoto does the rest for you. This means that the options available to you are limited. If you select too many columns, your photos will shrink to smaller sizes than you would like. If you set too few columns, you will be wasting paper transfer. At the same time, when you use the N-Up Print option, you have the ability to set the number of photos to be placed on one page.
Thus, you have more control over the print result and wasted less paper. The most popular use for the N-Up Print option is to print four photos per page using 4 × 6 photo paper. As a result, you get four photos suitable for insertion into a wallet.
After you select the Layout option, the Print window will change its appearance. That being said, the good news is that at this point you can bring back the missing ability to print N photos on one page. Set in the Pages per Sheet field the number of photos you want to print on one page (the options will be limited), set the Single Hairline option in the Border field (Fig. 9.53), and you will be ready to start printing.
Printing Photos at a Specified Size
If you want to print a photo on paper of a specified size, iPhoto is ready to give you this opportunity. The only problem is that the program will automatically crop the picture. What you really need is the Print-to-File option, which is not on the menu.
As it turns out, this option is buried deep in the context menu. To use it, select the desired photo, click the Print button and select the Customize option on the page that opens. Once you do this, the photo will open in iPhoto. Right click on the picture, select the Fit Photo to Frame Size option, and the image will be sized to fit the paper without cropping.
How to get to photos without iPhoto
The way it works has changed in iPhoto 08. In particular, the old file structure has been replaced with a batch, so viewing your photos directly is not possible without one simple and quick hack. To view your photos directly, find your iPhoto library (it's located in your Pictures folder, unless you've moved it anywhere) and right-click it (or Control-click it if you have a one-button mouse) to open the context menu. From the context menu that opens, select Show Package Contents.
A new Finder window will open, allowing you to flip through your iPhoto library without having to invoke iPhoto itself. This method is a little tedious if you want to use it regularly. A quick method to work around this complexity is to create an alias for the original folder. To do this, right-click on it and select the Create Alias \u200b\u200bcommand from the context menu that opens.
Place the created nickname in an easily accessible place - for example, on your desktop or in the Pictures folder. Once the nickname is in its place, you can access the originals of your photos at any time with just a few clicks. However, you should keep in mind that this access method is like a one-way street; it is not possible to add photos to the library using a pseudonym.
Nowadays, you will not surprise anyone with digital images. Photos accumulate and the question arises of how to store them correctly, find them quickly and easily view them. Because I prefer Apple products, the choice lies between Aperture and iPhoto. Both of these programs have the necessary functionality: creating albums, faces, GPS coordinates, search, image editing. In addition, they perfectly interact with Apple devices, which is not really surprising. As a result, I stopped at iPhoto. it is simpler and is included in the basic software package that comes with the Macbook, while Aperture is paid for.
The main sections in iPhoto are Events, Photos, Faces, Places, and Synchronization with various web services. Next, about everything in order
Developments
To begin with, all snapshots imported into iPhoto are divided into events. They can be sorted by title, date or manually. I try to choose a bright preview and keep the title short and "speaking". If the event is periodic, then I add some kind of numeric identifier, for example NG - 2009 or My DR. 25 years.
When hovering over the event from below, we observe the range of time in which the shooting was carried out, and the number of shots. If you move the cursor horizontally, you can familiarize yourself with the content.
In the properties of the event, we can mark the geographical position on the map, or it will appear on its own if coordinates were attached to the images. In the Description, I put the dates of the event itself + its type. In this case
Badminton when searching will show me pictures of all tournaments related to this sport.
The content of the events can be viewed by double-clicking on the preview, or by going to the photos section, where all events will be displayed.
Photos
If during import the images are divided into several directories, for example from Masha, from Petit, from Vasya, then I mix them into one. For me, it makes no difference who filmed. Therefore, the next step, in order to achieve chronological sequence, I check the date of the pictures, or try to set it close enough to the true. This will give us an adequate picture of what is happening when sorting by date, and will also line up all the events in the sequence in which they took place. Simultaneously with this process, I discard garbage, leaving only the best out of almost identical images.
The next step is color correction, cropping and leveling the horizon.
Now, let's move on to the faces. iPhoto finds them on its own, but it can sometimes be wrong. In such cases, the face can be marked manually. If the carrier of the face is in the address book, the pictures are linked to the contact. IPhoto gradually learns and begins to recognize people, but it can unlearn it if the faces are of poor quality and small, or the picture is taken in profile. I noticed that the program poorly identifies people wearing sunglasses.
Then I put down points on the map. Unfortunately, in landscape mode, the map is not very detailed, but by entering the exact address in large cities, the place will be determined correctly. The map will only be visible if you have Internet access.
For almost every picture I name it as follows: A place. The name of the event. Comment... This is quite convenient if the pictures are posted on the network. Perhaps for someone such parameter as date will be interesting.
In the case of shooting any museum exhibits with an attached description, I will drive the description text into the appropriate area.
And the last two parameters that can be assigned to images are tags and rating. For myself, I have not found any application, but I believe that tags are convenient to use to indicate the author of a picture, and the rating will be useful for those who like to send the same pictures to different resources. Let's put the best photos 5 stars and start uploading them to all social networks.
Faces
This is where all the people who have been tagged in the photographs are located. The names either correspond to the address book, or the name you specify yourself.
Having opened the faces of a certain person, you can choose two viewing modes: directly the faces themselves (as in the preview), or a mode where the entire picture is shown in which this face is marked.
Information about this person contains his name, the range of time in which the pictures with his participation were taken, the number of pictures and e-mail if he is in the linked contact. It is he, as I understand it, is the key parameter when identifying a user on Facebook, but more on that later.
Places
This is where it is good to study the history of the world in pictures, it is here.
First, you can boast to your friends of a wide geographical coverage, which, judging by the tags, is clearly not about me yet.
And then go through the points thoroughly.
Album and smart album
There is a separate category that is not visible in my screenshots, because I didn't have time to take full advantage of it. I'll tell you a little about her.
Album is inherently similar to something with Eventbut serves somewhat different purposes. You can collect any pictures in it. Let's say I would like to have an album with all the sunset shots. In addition, albums can be arranged in a tree-like directory system.
Smart Albums are designed to select pictures according to the following possible criteria: album, any text, description, date, event, face, file name, keyword, my rating, location, photo, title, aperture, camera model, flash, ISO focal length and shutter speed.
Synchronization with various web services
By default, iPhoto has 3 services for uploading photos: Flickr, Facebook and MobileMe. I do not use MobileMe because it is paid for, but I will try to tell a little about the rest.
All pictures are laid out in one touch and there is no point in describing this process. However, I note that the information information is synchronized, so at any time you can correct the signature, mark a person or perform any other action.
Consider the display of images taken at the Nuclear Energy Museum.
Facebook synced the title and tagged me in the picture. At the same time, I found my account by e-mail taken from the MacOS address book. Thus, you can already mark all your friends for Facebook in iPhoto.
Flickr, on the other hand, synchronizes the title of the image and its description.
Problems and solutions
For those who would like to use iPhoto, it is better to start reading this article from this section.
Any change to a photo, be it color correction, flipping, or cropping, will cause iPhoto to create a duplicate. Thus, there is always a chance to roll back to the original image. But a huge disadvantage is that such a reservation eats up a lot of hard disk space, while the program does not have the function to make a modified picture with a new original. To solve this problem, the following method was invented:
All original snapshots are by default stored in /% Macintosh HD /% Username / Pictures / iPhoto Library / Originals /
And the modified images are in /% Macintosh HD /% Username / Pictures / iPhoto Library / Modified /
Now let's replace the images in the Originals catalog with the images of the same name from the Modified Images catalog.
Then in iPhoto, select the pictures and click the function Revert to original... Thus, the modified image becomes original.
But all the troubles do not end there. In all pictures that have been turned upside down, cropped or tilted, the coordinates of the faces will be recollected, and the faces will have to be marked again. Therefore, this operation must be carried out immediately after the transformation, and only then only mark the faces in the photographs.
If you see that something is wrong with the thumbnails, then you need to restart iPhoto in a different mode:
hold down the Option and Command keys and click the iPhoto icon (continue to hold the Option and Command keys). Next, select the desired items and wait for the end of the process
Alternative software
I tried the app for several hours on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4S (with iOS 5.1, of course, since this is a system requirement), and in my opinion it is a very powerful app. As I will demonstrate later, Apple has been able to port many of its advanced photo editing capabilities and advanced technologies to iPhoto on mobile, almost above iPhoto for Mac in terms of editing, quick adjustments and interaction with photos. Once mastered, new gestures and commands can be quite powerful, although learning to use the new interface is not easy. I also believe that iPhoto for iOS suffers from a serious file management problem - the best example of the lack of a centralized file system through which applications can easily communicate with each other, share files and their modifications.
I'd like to get it all out rather quickly before moving on to the (very) good part. If you were hoping that Apple came up with an easy way to import photos, avoiding duplicates and manual control, sorry, but you will be disappointed with the application. iPhoto for iOS is another standalone app that simply can't “sync” changes to a photo.
I said simple because iPhoto for iOS doesn't use the photo upload system that iPhoto for Mac does. Since every iOS device comes with a system-wide Camera Roll that other apps have access to, Apple developers had to make sure iPhoto had access to that location — and that's where I started to run into problems.
First, let's get familiar with the basic terminology:
- iPhoto for iOS is an app.
- Photos.app is another app from Apple that comes pre-installed on every device.
- Camera Roll is a system function.
- Albums are system-wide.
- System-wide events.
- If you import photos using the Camera Connection Kit, you'll find “Last Import” and “All Imported” in iPhoto and Photos.app.
When you first launch iPhoto for iOS, the app will update your photo library, and this will happen very often when you add new photos to the Camera Roll (for example, screenshots). This can be quite annoying if you are reviewing iPhoto, but I think regular users will rarely pay attention to such "problems". In any case, as you can see from the screenshots, the main iPhoto for iPad window contains all your albums in the form of a shelf, and at the top there is a panel for switching between sections. However, this Albums tab contains not only albums created in Photos.apr (they are presented as a gray book), but also Photo Stream, Camera Roll, Last Imported, All Imported (blue books), Edited and Favorites (brown books). Brown albums are specific to iPhoto only.
When I started using iPhoto for iOS, I moved some photos to other albums. During the test, I paid attention to several details:
- Edited photos are not automatically saved to Album or Camera Roll.
- Album Everything imported displays different thumbnails in iPhoto and Photos.app (at least on my device).
For the iPhoto test, I imported a few photos using the Camera Connection Kit, saved a few from the Photo Stream to the Camera Roll, and selected a few existing ones from the Camera Roll. After a few minutes of exploring the interface and editing various functions, I returned to the main screen of the program, hoping to see that all my changes were automatically saved to the Camera Roll system album. I reasoned like this: if iPhoto for iOS, unlike the Mac version, can import photos from a centralized location (Camera Roll), then the changes will also sync automatically... Not so fast. It turned out that the Camera Roll is not centralized at all, and every photo change made in iPhoto is exported to the Camera Roll as a new file. Better yet, if you're editing something in iPhoto from the Camera Roll "album", further editing the same file from the system Camera Roll in Photos.app will cause iOS to error informing the changes, and you end up with two different files in the same Camera Roll.
From this point of view, some of you may disagree with me that such file management is inherent in the design of iOS. Of course, I can admit that Apple's sandbox architecture improves security, but at the same time limits apps in terms of syncing between each other (and the system. However, here I see two apps accessing resources from the same system function (Camera Roll) can't sync the changes I'm making, as I said, I ended up with another file in the Camera Roll.
Another counterargument might be that iPhoto is a standalone photo editing application sold in the App Store and does not replace the changes Photos.app made in the Camera Roll. Looking at the problem from this point of view, we can call Photos.app a more "priority" application for saving changes - for example, even with my problem of "different files", third-party applications integrated with the Camera Roll identify the file from Photos.app, and not from iPhoto. As such, I can agree that iPhoto for iOS was created as a photo editing tool on top of Photos.app and the system Camera Roll - a tool to keep its duplicates. But I disagree that not being able to import a new edited version of a photo after making changes in iPhoto and Photos.app is a good sign. In fact, I think this is a bug and should be fixed.
- The edited photo from the Camera Roll displays the “edit” icon in the Camera Roll in the Edited in iPhoto album. This is not the case in the Camera Roll in Photos.
- Saving a photo to Camera Roll from iPhoto creates a new file.
- Try this: edit the file in iPhoto, don't export. Open the same photo in Photos and change it. Start iPhoto again. iPhoto does not display the changes you just made in the system Camera Roll, but instead displays the old “edited” version. I think it was at this stage that there was a bug, because the Cancel button removes the photo. The new modified version from Photos.app is displayed here, but cannot be imported into iPhoto.
This is the point. iPhoto is a new app, and it tends to have bugs. I hope this problem of editing one file in two applications will be fixed soon, because it can really be confusing to the user. However, the main "problem" remains in place - iPhoto is not a full-fledged replacement for the standard Photos.app application and cannot become one, unlike many expectations. With that in mind, I can say that the rest of the app is very interesting and works just fine in some areas.
Various metaphors are widely used in interface elements. Libraries consist of glass shelves, albums are presented in the form of a book, photographs are placed against a linen background, and brushes look like real brushes, effects are organized in a rotating menu / palette. Don't forget that the horizon cropping and straightening tool interface is also presented as a spinning disc.
While interfaces are a matter of taste, I found it interesting in iPhoto for iOS that almost every feature can be accessed in two ways: gestures or sliders. You can use the familiar pinch & pan gesture to crop, and you can use the slider at the bottom to adjust highlights / shadows and exposure, or tap the screen with a delay, then slide your finger across the screen and manually select the intensity of the adjustment. To adjust saturation, skin tone, blue skies and greens, you can do the same, only in a different tab. Some settings like white balance (there are 9 parameters here) and the aforementioned effects are only available through the interface, but I think it's important to note the role of gestures in the application. They become like hot keys, just like on a computer.
Personally, I didn't really like the pop-up pictures of brushes and effects (screenshot below) - not only because my tastes differ from Apple, but also because these elements make it seem like they slow down the interface, especially on iPad 2. Or, again however, these may be bugs of the first version of iPhoto - it is quite possible, although, I think, the animation in general (opening / closing the brush panel, turning pages) could be faster. However, I really liked two things - hints, which can be invoked at any time using the? Button, and sound effects (you can turn them off in the settings). I don't like some aspects of iPhoto on the iPhone that are “simpler” than its iPad sibling.
I think Apple could have made the iPhoto navigation system better. Especially on the iPad, I think the app should take a simpler approach in the photo selection process - instead of moving the sidebar to the center (which can be quite confusing), it would be better to take a page from the Photos.app book with a simple grid → full screen process. Basically, the Photos view (which contains photos of all albums except Photo Stream) has a grid interface, but the Camera Roll in iPhoto does not. When you open the Camera Roll album (which is where you'll most often import photos for editing), the app will navigate to splitting the interface with a side (landscape mode) and bottom (portrait mode) panel, where the thumbnails of photos will be displayed. In landscape mode, the sidebar can be resized to display only one column of thumbnails. If you enlarge it, you will be able to view three columns at once. The same is true for portrait mode, only horizontally. In addition, there is a pop-up window in the sidebar (I assume you will use iPhoto more often in landscape mode) to display All Photos, Tagged Photos, Edited Photos, Hidden Photos, or All and Hidden Photos. (Photos can be hidden using the X button in Edit mode). One last thing: the sidebar can be moved to both sides of the screen by pulling on the header.
Sidebar thumbnails can be used. A simple touch allows you to view a photo, a double tap allows the application to automatically select multiple photos (and it works quite accurately), a delayed touch on a thumbnail adds it as a selection to the main panel.
This is the most confusing part of iPhoto and is the reason why many bloggers criticize the app. It's not clear if the sidebar can be moved, it's not clear what all of these do. Clicking the grid button on the top toolbar shows and hides the sidebar, but you can also do the same with the bezel gesture from the edge of the screen. However, try adding a few photos to the selection: the main panel will also become a grid, the selections are somewhat obscure, and tapping on the selection in the main panel will open the photo not in full screen, but above the grid. I think it all works in a confusing way. There is no "clear all" button, a simple tap does not remove the selection. If you double-tap and hold your finger (yes, you heard right), you will open the Loupe tool in the preview section. In my opinion, you now understand how easy it is to use Photos.app compared to the stunning iPhoto.
Ultimately, iPhoto for iOS isn't as bad as you might think. The app is powerful yet designed for mobile devices (don't forget the iPhone) and costs $ 4.99. The effects are pretty good, the sharing options are decent too, the Journals feature is one of those users like my mom will love and the geeks will ignore. The editing functionality in iPhoto works, and I'm not going to write something like “Apple disappointed” because this is only the first version of the application and it may have bugs. There is no doubt that iPhoto is an impressive piece of engineering, maybe a little less in terms of design, but that's personal preference. However, there are issues here that need to be mentioned and app (and iOS in general) limitations that Apple will have to address. If we have one Camera Roll directory, why can't Apple allow two apps to treat it as one directory? If Apple has made both apps, why can't it make the overall design and navigation elements without using different sidebars and grids, which can confuse the user? Why can't Apple be consistent in tapas, tapas and delay, button labels?
There are several things iPhoto should do better. iPhoto is a powerful app, again, it even works on your phone, but there shouldn't be any duplicates in the Camera Roll. The editing engine is good, the application contains a lot of functions. I can't wait to try it on the new iPad with Retina display.
via by Federico Viticci
